Moderna | 2024 | N. 1

The essay offers an overview of Italian prose of the last ten years (approximately 2014-2024), using the categories of Ipermodernità (il Mulino : 2014). In particular, it examines processes such as storytelling and essayfication, the spread of writings of the ego, the success of non-fiction, the re-appropriation of media stories, the decline of autofiction in favor of forms in a broadly sense autobiographical (e.g. the memoir), the attention to themes concerning moral life. It then follows the trajectories of some writers (Ferrante, Siti, Moresco, Saviano, Mari, Trevi, Franchini, Mozzi) and highlights some significant debuts or books (Ranieri, Pecoraro, Trevisan, Falco, Lagioia, Scarpa, Barone…).

In this paper I intend to reflect on the conditions that might make it possible to build a critical map of Italian women writer’s fiction of the new millennium. I will especially focus on the conditions that make it possible to tackle women’s writing not only as a sum of individual authorial experiences, but rather in the systemic terms of a literary community made recognisable by a gendered gaze. I will first examine the minor attention by Italian critics on women’s fiction, then I will evaluate the usefulness of an articulatory approach, inspired by the feminist concepts of intersectionality and margin, for its description.

The article deals with a formal trend that has characterized Italian fiction since the early 2000s. This trend revolves around narrative strategies that aim to foreground narrators and authors. After a brief introduction, paragraphs 2 through 5 illustrate, through some examples, the different ways in which this trend has been realized. In the sixth paragraph, an attempt is made to reflect on the reasons behind the current exploit of narrators and authors, also taking into account extra-literary factors. The last paragraph mentions some paths taken in the same period that seem to oppose the trend discussed in this article.

Appealing to three different interpretations, this essay aims to present Francesco Pecoraro’s fictional aesthetics. The first focuses on his characters and, drawing on Debenedetti’s theory and some recent biological and anthropological theories, analyses the different types of (anti)heroes we meet in his novels. The second looks out to novels’ different settings, which constitute one of the centre of Pecoraro’s speculative investigation: from the Valle Aurelia district to the airport of Sharm-el-Sheik, from Lavinio’s beach to the Greek islands, each environment allegorically refers to the relationship between utility and beauty. The third core of the investigation shifts our gaze to the category of the novel-essay: the fragmentation and contamination of voices and points of view become one of the most effective strategies through which this writer defines his very personal ethics, disenchanted but not entirely challenged.

The article examines and compares two works by Giorgio Falco (one of the most interesting contemporary Italian writers) : Pausa caffè and Ipotesi di una sconfitta. The style of the two books is different, which is consistent with the type of representation proposed. Pausa caffè is a collection of very short stories ; almost all of them present a strong expressive experimentalism. Ipotesi di una sconfitta is an autobiographical novel, characterised by the so-called stile semplice. However, the two works have some aspects in common : the critique of labor conditions in the neoliberal economy, which causes neurosis and alienation, and the rejection of moralistic or victimistic attitudes, which are very common in today’s literature.

This article tries to outline the evolution of Vitaliano Trevisan’s writing from the beginning in 1995 to the last posthumous work Black Tulips. The focus is on how, and why, Trevisan began writing, and subsequently, on why and how he changed his approach to literature when, after achieving success as a writer (I quindicimila passi) and actor (Primo amore), Trevisan decided to transition from fiction writing to using literature as a research instrument. The article also attempts to explain how, contrary to expectations in such a trend, Trevisan’s masterpiece (the book Works) finally brought him closer than ever before to the genre of the novel. The analysis primarily draws from sources and models, examining style, rhythm, and syntactic aspects in Trevisan’s writing.

The Bibliographic Repertoire lists and discusses the main critical essays on Italian Prose of the 2000s published between 2000-2023. The studies considered frame the critical debate on Italian literature of the last twenty years and focus on the literary genres, themes and narrative strategies most practiced by contemporary authors with the aim of showing the reader some basic critical coordinates.
Particular importance is given to monographs, even though the Repertoire also includes a number of the more significant collective books and papers in academic reviews. Monographic numbers of journals and conference proceedings on trends in contemporary Italian literature are also taken into consideration.